


To the Waters and the Wild

by Anonymous



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Animal Transformation, Case Fic, Hurt/Comfort, I might have gotten over enthusiastic with the Witcher OCs, M/M, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:15:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27792145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: In a village besieged by something that kills the families of babies, Geralt finds a cat trapped by a tree.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Original Male Character
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33
Collections: Heart Attack Exchange 2020, anonymous





	1. The Cat in the Tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Masu_Trout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/gifts).



“Your friend ran off with half the coin, Witcher, and left us to the creature,” the village headsman said, one thick finger pressed into Geralt’s chest. He was a larger man, thickset and tall, and carrying a sleeping baby in a heavily embroidered sling wrapped around his chest. He spoke sharply, but very quietly.

Geralt’s mouth opened. Then he closed it. Glanced over his shoulder at Jaskier, who waved cheerfully but didn’t twitch from where he was warming his hands by the fire. “But we just got here?” Geralt said eventually, uncertainly. "Jaskier hasn't even done anything"

The headsman’s forehead furrowed, as he followed Geralt’s gaze. “Ah--no, your other friend.”

Geralt thought about it. Outside the tavern’s windows, thunder rumbled as the rain continued. “Huh,” Geralt said, prevaricating out of hope that a name would occur to him if he just waited long enough. But no one came to mind. “Did she have black hair?” he asked eventually. Yennefer might have described herself as his friend. Probably sarcastically.

“A Witcher,” the headsman clarified, dropping his hand as the chest poking got awkward, jiggling the baby as it made a discontented sound. “He said he was the best of friends with the _Great White Wolf_ , and I foolishly thought--! You keep worse company than the songs suggest.”

“He’s probably dead,” Geralt offered, “That’s what it usually means when we don’t come back.” Abruptly, Geralt’s stomach twisted. “Oh. Fuck, he’s probably dead. What’d he look like?”

He’d gone and made it awkward, Geralt realized, and Jaskier was still trying to crawl into the fireplace to warm up. He should try to smooth it over. “I’ve got a lot of brothers, it’d be nice to know which. I won't--it's just that--I'd like to know.”

The headsman stared at Geralt, and Geralt had the awful suspicion that he hadn’t made anything better. “Don’t worry, I’ll kill your demon before I go looking for his corpse.”

The headsman’s face crumpled, and he let out a low, miserable sob.

“Jaskier," Geralt called, taking a judicious step back. “I didn’t do anything, he’s just--”

“I’m so _sorry_ \--” the man wailed, and Geralt froze like a rabbit sighting a hawk. A emotions curse? He'd seen one once, an entire village twisted between despair and mania from one breath to the next. It'd been cursed dolls, that time, given to the children by a witch who'd lost her mind. His medallion wasn't reacting, though. Maybe the man was just sad?

Geralt breathed out, steadied himself because Jaskier was still ignoring him in favour of the fire. He could do this. "Are you okay?" Geralt asked, because he'd heard Jaskier ask the same question to great effect many times. It sounded so much worse when Geralt said it, like he was sounding out a question in a language he didn't know. Geralt cursed himself for trying.

The baby started wailing, and Geralt gripped the handle on his tankard of ale like it was the hilt of his sword. The wood cracked and the handle snapped clean off, forcing Geralt to grab it with both hands to keep from spilling.

Jaskier mercifully hip-checked Geralt to the side, taking his place in front of the two weeping humans. "Oh dear, are you okay?" Jaskier asked, sincerity oozing out of every word. "Have a sit down and another mug of this fine ale--and this handkerchief--" Jaskier's eyes flicked up to Geralt, then he looked pointedly at the table in the corner.

Sweet relief flooded Geralt as he followed Jaskier's instructions, taking the seat that put his back to the wall. The relief lasted just as long as it took him to realize that Jaskier was leading the headman and baby toward the same table. Geralt mouthed _no_ at Jaskier, shaking his head as he tried to communicate that he didn't want this. 

Jaskier ignored him. Geralt couldn't get up now, it'd be weird. Jaskier knew that, damn him. Geralt set the tankard down before he could crack it in half, watching Jaskier backpat and murmur at the headman who was sobbing something utterly incomprehensible, even with super-human hearing.

"He's very sorry," Jaskier said as soon as he'd guided the man into the seat across from Geralt. "Devon didn't mean to imply that your brother was a thief, and he's awfully sorry that the demon ate your brother, too."

"Oh." Geralt nodded, trying to make his face do something sympathetic--it felt like he was grimacing. He was probably grimacing. "We're all abandoned or sold as children, so we just call each other brother. It's all the family we'll ever have, but we're not blood-related or anything. I'm sorry that a demon ate your brother. That's very unfortunate. I can kill it for you, I do that." 

"See, Geralt isn't mad," Jaskier soothed, his hands fluttering through the air as he rolled his eyes at Geralt. "Shhhhhh, you're upsetting little Saskie, shhhhh."

Somehow, that worked. The man--Devon? Jaskier must have gotten his name--calmed, mopping his face clean with Jaskier's silk handkerchief and handing it back. Jaskier held it delicately between his thumb and forefinger as he ferried the damp cloth into his pocket, keeping his face solemn and earnest. "Now isn't that better?" Jaskier cooed-asked the table at large.

Geralt nodded when Jaskier raised an eyebrow at him, reeling a little at how fast that'd turned around, then gone and turned around again. Humans were unpredictable, wild things, and Jaskier some kind of uncanny human whisperer. Geralt had no idea how he did it. He'd spent the first few months of their acquaintanceship casually touching his medallion when Jaskier talked to people, but it'd never even revealed a hint of magic. Whatever Jaskier was doing was too subtle for it to pick up. After years of observations, Geralt was starting to suspect that it wasn't even magical, just people genuinely liking Jaskier.

Vesemir had suggested some kind of succubus heritage when Geralt had asked one winter, though only after Geralt had mentioned how many lovers Jaskier tended to run through in a month. Geralt thought that was a little unfair--if he or any other witcher _could_ be, he was fairly sure they'd be just as slutty as Jaskier. Though Vesemir had a point. Pheromones weren't magical, so they wouldn't trigger his medallion.

Geralt breathed in, subtly sniffing Jaskier, but he smelled like wet wool and the smoked jerky he'd eaten earlier.

Another mug of ale clanked down in front of Geralt, the server blushing as Jaskier made eye contact with him. He didn't even look at Geralt, scooping up the coin Jaskier tossed to him with a flutter of his lashes before he disappeared back behind the bar. 

"The beast slaughtered my brother and his wife not a month ago," the headsman said, his eyes still red and swollen from crying. It made Geralt uneasy--did crying hurt? It looked like it hurt. He didn't remember crying hurting, but he'd been a child and his memories were really fuzzy. "Saskie is their daughter," he added, holding the infant closer to his chest. An unsettlingly tiny fist lifted out, grabbing onto his shirt.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Geralt said, and it came out like he was reading Gwent card stats. He bit his tongue to keep from making it worse by saying anything more, and stared at Jaskier pleadingly. 

"Such a tragedy," Jaskier said, his voice so soft and low and gentle that Geralt's skin ached to hear it. He scraped his nails over his wrist until that feeling went away, then downed his drink in one go. He needed more alcohol for this. "How many people has it killed, now?"

"Fifteen, all of them on the outskirts of town," the headsman said, his voice cracking. "Each one closer in. It's three families to a single house in the homes closest to the center of town--everyone is terrified. We thought the Witcher would kill the thing, but it took my brother the very next night and--"

Jaskier patted his shoulder as Devon tried to gather his cracking composure. "Was Saskie not with them?" he asked.

Devon shook his head, and drank deeply from his ale. "I found her in her cradle, fast asleep and painted in their blood. They'd died protecting her best they could, but the beast has no interest in children."

This was far steadier ground, and Geralt was painfully glad he had Jaskier with him. Geralt had not realized, precisely, how much people had feared and hated him until they had become merely wary of him. Jaskier's songs had changed how people saw Geralt to an extent that left him floundering. He was not _un_ grateful, but it was--it was. "Were there other survivors?" Geralt asked, pulling out his journal and flipping it open to a clean page. "Children?"

"Each attack had been survived by at least one child." The headsman's hands shook as he set the mug down. "Parents, older siblings, aunts and uncles--torn apart in front of them. It's horrible."

Geralt snuck a glance at the baby, but it looked like a normal human infant. Probably not the monster--his medallion usually picked up on curses like that. "Any relation to the full moon?" he asked. Could be a werewolf with a fondness for children. Or a fondness for terrifying them, it could be hard to tell with cases like this. "Or the new moon."

"The first three were around the full moon, yes. My brother's family only two week after the others, in the new moon."

Geralt scraped a careful line through _Werewolf?_ and hummed softly to himself. "Time of day when it attacks?"

"It was during the night for Athes and her husband, and the miller's family. Then it slaughtered Marta's pigs during the full moon, would have taken her family if they'd been there. Marta's husband came home from the tavern to find all ten of their pigs dead and ripped to pieces, and his wife and daughter down by the river with the baby, trying to get their laundry out of the blackberry briars in the dark. Or rather they found him when they heard his screaming--he thought it'd taken them, you see, but the dog had run off with the laundry at dusk, thank Auberon."

"It killed during the day?" Geralt asked, tapping the paper as he thought. "Are you certain?"

My brother--" he paused, pressed his fingertips against his face as he breathed in slow, the scent of his grief slowly filling the air. "I found them around dinner time, when they didn't come to our parents home for dinner. The last attack was found a day or two after the last time they were seen. Impossible to say when it happened."

"Did Marta see anything?" Jaskier asked, and Geralt could sense his interest rising. "Did they ever find the dog? Or did any of the children see anything?"

"Likely," Devon said, "though the surviving children haven't said a word about it, on account of all being under a year of age. I don't know if they found the dog."

Geralt hummed, a thought itching just out of his grasp. "The family with the pigs--they weren't at the farm when it happened?"

"The other Witcher..." Devon's eyes flicked up to meet Geralt's then returned to staring at the baby, "he spoke to Marta. She'd said that the dog had been nervous all week. It'd grabbed her skirts when she was weeding the kitchen garden, and tried to get her to play with it before it stole her best dress from the drying line and ran off with it."

"The dog was trying to get her to follow it," Geralt said, underlining _Possessed?_ in his journal. "The Witcher went looking for the dog, didn't he." It was a reasonable course of action. Geralt probably would have done it himself, except for-- "How old are the babies?"

"He did--" Devon shifted back, his eyes narrowing. "What does that matter?"

"Every murder was witnessed by a baby--common theme. Only one missing dog that you've mentioned. Unless there were more?" Jaskier interjected, and something about the way he said it made Devon relax. 

"Ah, true. True. One baby died, though it wasn't the beast, I don't think. Just took too long until someone found the scene." Devon drank again, his ale refilled by the bar boy. "Grim business. None of them have been older than six months, I don't think."

"The one that died. Was it in the first attack?" Geralt crossed out _Possessed_ , and wrote in _baby_ , though it was a useless note. There were a thousand and one things that came with new life ended abruptly. Geralt didn't understand how humans were ever brave enough to procreate, given all the horrid things that could crawl out of them. "Do you know what the baby's name was?"

"It was. And--I think she was too young to be named. She was their first born, only a few days old."

Unnamed dead baby. Those were always bad. "Anything odd about the first deaths?" Wasn't impossible that it could be the source of the daylight attacks, at least. "Could the baby have died first?"

Jaskier interrupted, "This is important, I promise you. Dark business, but knowing precisely what afflicts this town is crucial to Geralt defeating it." He kicked Geralt under the table--probably trying to stretch out the cramps in his calves from the hike up to the village. Geralt was glad he didn't get those, they seemed painful. 

"It'd been at least three days, in full summer."

"Has the mother of each baby died?" Geralt asked, thinking through the long list of creatures created by dead children and mothers. "Did any of the families have a cat?"

Two families had cats. One mother had escaped death, her daughter and husband dying while she was taking firewood to her parents across the village. It wasn't known if objects had started disappearing prior, nor if there'd been a scent of lilies around the home. Devon's brother hadn't mentioned if the cradle had felt oddly cold. 

Geralt didn't have enough information.

"It could be a spirit of some kind," Geralt said eventually, though he was unsure. "From the mother or the baby I can't say. It's not malicious--spirits of this kind are created of grief, not rage. It's reliving what happened the first time, and caught in that fury."

"They couldn't have done that to themselves, Witcher. Athes was in three pieces!" 

"You might have had a werewolf. It's what I would have guessed from first three attacks--but the other two have been during the wrong phase of the moon, and there's not enough deaths for it to be a werewolf that's gone entirely to its wolf form. Bad luck drawing more bad luck," Geralt said. "The other witcher--he went out chasing something, did he not?"

"He said it was a werewolf as well," Devon agreed. "He went toward the old mill, but it was empty when we looked the next week--not even the dust disturbed. Do you truly think this is two different creatures?"

"Perhaps. It's difficult to say until I track it down. The last full moon was three days ago--did anyone die?"

"No, no one. The last attack was five days ago." 

Geralt marked out the dates in his journal, drawing the moon phase above each. "Full moon on the first three, new moon on the fourth, and a waxing moon on the fifth. Night for the first three, likely during the day for the fourth, and you don't know for certain when the last one attacked." He stared at it, thinking, but there was nothing else to be gleaned from Devon's descriptions. "We are at the end of what I can ask about your beast. May I ask about the other Witcher?"

Devon's eyes flickered to Jaskier, then back to Geralt. "Yes of course--what do you need to know?"

Geralt flipped to a new page and sharpened the quill Jaskier had given him last autumn before dipping it in the ink. "Did he give a name? What did he look like?"

"No, we--we just called him Witcher. He was shorter than me by a fair amount. Had dark hair, dark skin, Witcher eyes and an accent like he was of west Cintra, though he looked as though he was from far further south."

"Any facial scars?" Geralt asked. People noticed those well enough to tell him details about them. The accent was unfamiliar, but sometimes they switched their accents when going through countries that might be less fond of the source of their first one.

"None that were noticeable."

Geralt thought about it. "None at all? Did he look younger than me?"

Devon squinted at him. "Forgive me, Witcher, but I'm unsure how old you are."

Jaskier muffled a laugh in his hand. "Did he look like he was in his twenties, maybe? Or older?"

"Hard to say. He was fully grown, certainly, but he could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five." 

"Hmm." Geralt leaned toward the Witcher being on the younger side, if his face hadn't picked up any distinctive scarring yet. But that also meant that Geralt had no idea who he was looking for. Lambert was the only Witcher younger than him that Geralt knew well, but Lambert would have been described very differently. Geralt couldn't imagine Devon not mentioning Lambert's attitude, at minimum. "Was there anything distinctive about him?"

"Rode a bay gelding," Devon offered eventually. "He called it Stump."

Geralt frowned. That helped more than Devon probably thought--Geralt knew the names of all of his fellow wolf Witcher's horses as of last winter. More than that, he knew who would name their horse 'Stump' and also admit to it in public. "Adon, maybe. Or Leon." He wasn't terribly close to either of them--Adon was around a century older than him, and Leon five years younger. Perhaps Devon had read too much into them saying that they knew Geralt. "Thank you," Geralt said, because it had been nice of Devon to answer his questions.

Devon gave him a particularly bleak look before he looked back to the baby. "Think nothing of it. I am sorry for your loss."

Outside, thunder roared loud enough to send ripples through Geralt's ale, and rain slapped against the walls like it was trying to rip through them. Inside, the fire blazed in the hearth, warm and comforting. Geralt eyed it, thinking about how nice it'd be to dry off and get some sleep. They'd been hiking through the storms for two days to get here, roads too slick to ride, sheltering under pine trees and sharing Jaskier's bedroll so they could use Geralt's slightly more waterproof one as a tent. Neither of them had been dry in days.

"You said the last attack was at a farm to the north, past the pond and right at the lightning struck-tree?" Geralt asked, hauling himself to his feet. Cold water dripped from his hair down his neck at the sudden moment, but there was no use lingering. If it attacked again while he dried himself off, he'd be lucky to make it out of town before they starting throwing rocks. 

"You're leaving right now?" Devon asked. "It's raining cats and dogs."

"Geralt likes getting right to it!" Jaskier said brightly. "Though, forgive me my friend, I'm not going back out there."

"Small blessings," Geralt joked, absently tapping his knuckles against Jaskier's shoulder as he went by. "Stay dry, get some rest. I don't know when I'll be back."

"I'll do my best." Jaskier grinned at him. "I'll get us a room?"

"We'll probably be here a few days--until I kill it and the storm lets up," Geralt agreed. He turned his attention to Devon. "I don't know how feasible it is, but you might want to consider bringing as many people as possible inside the town's walls--particularly the families of new babies. Siblings, aunts and uncles--anyone who can afford to leave. I can't say that it'll stop the thing, but it could spare some lives if it attacks again before I find it."

"People will hate that," Devon said. "Practical, yes, but you can't ask people to abandon their families to die!"

"Tell them that it's protecting the older children. The aunts and uncles and grandparents are going with to keep an eye on them, but the real draw is protecting the older children, right?" Jaskier suggested. He drank his ale, and hummed thoughtfully. "Though even should you decide not to, please do remember that Geralt suggested it. In the end, Geralt is only one man--"

"One Witcher," Geralt interrupted, looking at the hearth longingly as he tried to discretely wring out his hair. They'd been inside for near an hour and it was still dripping down his spine. "Not a man."

"--one Witcher," Jaskier continued smoothly, "And he has to find the monster before he kills it. Like finding a needle in a haystack in forests and weather like this--"

"It's not that bad," Geralt said, feeling vaguely embarrassed and not sure why. Jaskier was quoting what he'd said on their way into town, nearly verbatim, and it was true enough, but-- "I'll find it eventually."

"Let me be clear, Devon. It will likely take at least a few days to kill the creature, and in that time, it could attack again. If you choose to ignore Geralt's suggestions, you must not blame him for that."

Devon's eyes slid from Jaskier to Geralt, then back again. "One doesn't blame the healer when a dying man dies."

"Many do."

Geralt stood before Jaskier could make it worse. It wasn't wise to provoke humans by suggesting that being a Witcher was a profession as much as it was a creature. "I'm heading out." He flipped back through his notes, and read out, "South from here, to the old mill, then head down the fork on the near side of the pond?"

"That'll get you to the last site," Devon said. "I--appreciate your promptness?" his voice lilted up at the end, then he cleared his throat uncomfortably. "There will be a room for you here. The inn only has Skellige sleepers, I'm afraid, but Merisa insists that you can have the finest one without charge. Her niece--well. Every soul in the village has lost someone by now."

***

The rain was still pouring down. Geralt sniffed the air, hood pulled low to hide his face and keep off the rain, both. The rain made the air heavy with the scent of wet earth and rotting leaves from year before. It was a pleasantly rich scent, but it also drowned out any hint of anything else. He was going to be hunting nose-blind, or close to it. 

Sourly, Geralt pushed his hood back, rain immediately drenching his already wet hair. If he couldn't smell the thing coming, he'd have to rely on his eyes. He pulled a vial of cat, drinking it down as he took the south road. The darkness paled as his eyes went black, color stripped from the world but for flickers of red in the trees. Birds and squirrels, hunkered down in their little nests. Lucky creatures. 

Though he had no choice, Geralt would have _liked_ to have slept first--perhaps eaten hot food. Maybe even the rarest of luxuries, a hot bath to warm up his bones and time by a fire to dry his clothes so that they didn't squelch when he walked. With something as violent as the creature plaguing this town, though, Geralt didn't dare. It would have been nice, but nicer would be resting after after not being stoned out of the village for failing to save the last victims.

A Witcher ought to want nothing, but it had been only a week or two of travelling with Jaskier when Geralt had realized--abruptly and with much excitement--that with Jaskier at his side, people would let Geralt pay to sleep at inns, feed him decent food, and buy warm baths. Geralt's inappropriate longing for those things had developed very quickly after that, much as Geralt had tried to resist it.

Luckily the old mill was very close to the village, no more then five minutes walk. It had burnt, an upside down treework of blackened marks suggesting a lighting strike. It must have happened some years ago, as the old mill was now halfway to rotten, its roof caved in on one side and slick black mold growing down the inside walls. Shattered pieces of wooden furniture were shoved under the section still covered by the sagging roof, like someone had been trying to save the twelve pieces of a desk and chair to repair later. Geralt paused, pulling at the drawers of the desk until he could see inside them, but all of them were empty.

In the centre of the millroom, the millstone was cracked in two. It was a massive one, too big for Geralt to shift. As Devon has said, there was no evidence that anyone had been there for weeks. The mold and rain overlaid the other scents to the point where Geralt could only tell that no one had lingered there, but he couldn't see anything suspicious enough to attract his--or another Witcher's--attention.

Geralt shook the rain from his cowl and tugged it back over his face, turning back to leave. Then he paused.

By the sagging door, an arrow drawn in--Geralt crouched in front of the wall, brushing his fingertips over the smear. Tar? The scent of pine hit his nose and Geralt sneezed. Pine sap and dirt, still fresh enough to be half-wet. The arrow pointed straight out the door, a filled-in circle next to it to signify danger. Witcher signs--it'd been near a decade since Geralt had seen a fresh one he hadn't made. 

Odd. Had the other Witcher found the beast and then come back to make the sign? But why bother unless he believed he might die? Or--was there a third Witcher?

Unlikely. Geralt breathed in, concentrating on the scents filling the abandoned mill. Mold, thick enough to hide a lot of things. Sharp pine sap, pungent and clinging to his nose. Beneath, between, a faint note of dog.

He opened the door, and looked out into the rain. Had the other Witcher found the dog here? But why leave directions to danger--why come _back_ to make a signpost for danger? It didn't make sense.

Things that didn't make sense were usually traps, in Geralt's experience. But the great thing about traps (Geralt had told this to Jaskier once, and then promptly regretted it) was that they were a really fast way to find whatever you were hunting. Trip the trap, let the prey come running--a little damage had never slowed Geralt down.

It was much easier than interviewing people, no matter that Jaskier tried to argue different.

He sighed, shaking the water from his hood, and stepped back out into the rain.

There was no road in the direction of the arrow, just closely packed aspen trees, with undergrowth thick enough that Geralt was walking blind through it. A good place for an ambush, he thought optimistically. The stew at the inn had smelled damn good, and if he got back early enough, he could probably get a bowl or two. He wasn't starving yet, but he hadn't eaten since morning, and that had been only jerky and trail bread, the ground too damp to make cooking sensible.

Jaskier was probably eating stew. Lucky human. If Geralt was living his life over again--and got to pick, which he hadn't--he'd pick a job where he got to eat before he started working. Something less stressful, with less gravedigging and fewer corpses trying to eat him.

 _Actually, gravedigging probably wasn't half bad when you were doing it for normal corpses_ , Geralt thought idly, following the scent of pine sap to another tree. _Irregular work, but not especially difficult, and probably no one would try to murder him for burying people who they'd pay him to bury._

Another arrow drawn in pungent sap, and Geralt course-corrected accordingly. Sap was new--usually witchers used chalk or coal, or carved it into a tree and pissed on it to mark the location. Wolf Witchers, at least. Gerat had heard that other schools might use other signs. Maybe it wasn't a witcher doing it, though that would be strange. No one else would find their signs all that useful.

A deer trail cut through in the direction he was heading, and ahead he heard the rain splashing against water--a slow moving river or pond, probably. 

He didn't slow or hesitate when the back of his neck prickled, his medallion humming low. There was blood ahead of him. Faint and washed away by the rain, but fresh enough that the source might still be bleeding. Geralt hummed tunelessly, breathing in the forest's air. Deer, foxes, weasels, rabbits. He breathed out, tasted blood on the air again, a familiar taint to it. 

Witcher's blood.

Every ambush needed bait, didn't it? Geralt drew his sword--steel, not silver--and slipped off the path, drinking another dose of Cat as he moved through the trees far more silently than before. Witcher's blood smelled almost human, a faint note of poison and a muddy hint of chaos. Geralt had always thought it closest to bruxa blood, but it was a long-hewn argument--every Witcher alive smelled like they were monster-tainted, but none of them could agree on what monster.

The scent led him toward a well, long abandoned and half collapsed into a sinkhole. Geralt peered over the edge, steel sword drawn as he scented the air again. The bottom of the pit was filled with rubble and water, strewn with a few trees pulled down when the ground had collapsed. They were fresh, the sap strong and the needles still fresh on them. 

The blood scent thickened, and Geralt crouched at the edge of the newly made cliff, staring into the grey-washed pit. It was climbable, no reason for a Witcher to be stuck in it unless something was keeping them stuck. The faintest scent of saltpeter and sulfur told him what had collapsed the well--Dancing Stars or another bomb. If the Witcher had been inside at the time then he was probably dead.

The blood scent was fresh, though. Geralt rose, pacing the edge of the sinkhole as he searched for the easiest path down. It wouldn't hurt to investigate, find the other Wolf's body before he moved on. Geralt spared a hope that it wasn't anyone he knew, though the hope was most likely futile. There were damn few of them left.

Over the sound of rain, he heard rock scrape on rock beneath him, and a low, miserable sound. "Wolf?" Geralt called, low and soft. "You alive down there?" A very long pause, and Geralt almost left when he heard the sound repeat. "Hello?"

"Someone there?" a voice rasped back, then dissolved into a ragged coughing fit. 

Geralt leaned over the edge, looking down the raw limestone cliff to a patch of darkness in the middle of a pile of rubble, a tree collapsed on top of it. It was nearly covered by the water, but there was something vaguely humanoid about the shape of it. "Anything down there to kill, Wolf?"

The other Witcher struggled to get his breathing even, the sound of it sliding through the pattering rain to Geralt's ears. "Just me, I think," he said eventually. "Don't suppose--" he drew a slow careful breath, "--don't suppose you'd be here to help?" he asked, voice lilting into a hopeful question and bitter joke all in one.

Right. The other Witcher couldn't see him. "I'm coming down," Geralt said, finding a handy ledge to drop down from. He adjusted his pack on his back, thinking through the potions he had on him. Cat, Thunderbolt, Owl, one Swallow, but that wouldn't make much of a dent in anything serious.

Geralt landed in knee-deep water, his boots flooded immediately with murky water. Gravediggers probably didn't have to jump into sinkholes, Geralt thought as he picked his way through the water toward the scent of blood. The rubble and soupy mud was unstable and shifted under his weight, needing careful navigating to keep from getting caught in it. "You over there?"

Again a pause, then the other Witcher called, "Here."

Geralt nodded to himself, heading toward a massive pine tree, the trunk splintered and bent in the middle--nearly broken through. It looked like someone had hammered it with Aard so many time it'd started to pulp. Odds were good that was exactly what happened to it. Geralt skirted the massive rootball, coming round to the other side and finding more rock and a shadow buried deep in it. "Wolf?" Geralt asked uncertainly, pulling a camp lamp from his pack and lighting it with a flickering spark of Igni. 

His vision went white, then slowly resolved into dim colour as his vision adjusted to the new light under the influence of the Cat potion. The patch of shadow resolved into a face and an arm, the rest of the Witcher well buried under the tree, rock, and piles of thick mud. 

The other Witcher blinked, his eyes the yellow green of new leaves, and shockingly bright against surprisingly dark skin. He looked halfway to dead, skin grey and his cheekbones hollowed out from hunger. "Hello?"

Geralt was fairly certain he'd never seen him before in his life. He couldn't see a medallion, but he'd wager that it was no Wolf in front of him. At this point, Geralt would put money on him knowing or at least knowing _of_ every other Wolf still living. "Who are you?"

A low rumbling sound rolled from the other Witcher's chest as he breathed in, looking even paler. "You're the White Wolf."

Geralt had thought the sound was the wind rattling the tree's branches, had been ignoring it. But the water shivered around the other Witcher's chest, tiny waves generated by what was indisputably purring. Too small to be a Bear, a Griffon wouldn't have lied, and Snakes didn't purr. "You're a Cat." 

The other Witcher closed his eyes, the purring rolling through him as the scent of fear rose off of his soaked skin. "Yeah. Sorry."

Gravediggers didn't have to deal with kind of thing. There couldn't be any moral quandaries in digging a grave for a corpse. Geralt set the lamp down and crouched by the other Witcher, studying the debris covering him. "What's your name, Cat?" he asked, giving the tree a careful nudge. It rocked promisingly, but the Cat Witcher made a stifled pain sound at the small movement.

"I'm Axel," the Cat said. "And I'm not crazy, I promise."

"So when you told the headman at the village that we're best friends, practically brothers, that was...?" Geralt asked, picking up the lamp and shining it over Axel's pinned body. A slab had his right arm pinned, but it was the tree running across the slab and over Axel's belly that was probably the issue.

Axel's purring ratchetted up in intensity, a tremor shaking through him. "The songs--people like them? So I just imply that maybe we grew up together and we're really good friends and then people like me more?" He smiled at Geralt, a bright flash of too-sharp white teeth against his dark skin. "I lost my gear when the cave collapsed, but I think my coin purse is still on me--" he ran out of air, and started coughing when he inhaled.

"I'm going to help," Geralt said while Axel struggled to catch his breath. "The tree gone through you at all?"

The tension eased out of the other Witcher, his head sinking back into the muddy water as the nervous energy left him, too. It came up the the curves of his ears, made him look like a corpse left to the river. "Leg," Axel said when he could. "Branch caught it."

Geralt hummed thoughtfully, searching through the water until he found cloth and ice-cold flesh where he was expecting the Witcher's arm to be. "Lungs okay?" He found a hip next, then slid his hands down the Witcher's thigh, tugging stray stones away as he moved. The mud was thick with sand here, heavy and half-way burying Axel. "You're not breathing right."

Axel jolted sluggishly when Geralt found the branch, a sound that might have been a whimper leaving his lips. "I don't know," Axel wheezed, reaching toward Geralt with his free hand, and aborting as his already grey-ish skin paled further. "Hurts."

"Going to try to move fast here," Geralt said, taking a moment to explain because--he wasn't sure. The Cat couldn't exactly stop him. "This going to get worse before it gets better."

The Cat nodded, pretty eyes squeezed shut as he purred in short, rattling bursts. 

Geralt nodded to himself, and pulled the bone saw from the bottom of his pack. Never used it for anything but the really weird trophies, but it was invaluable for getting griffon beaks off. The branch was about the width of his wrist where Geralt grasped it just above Axel's skin. He did his best to be quick about it, holding the branch as still as he could while he sawed it free of the tree. Axel's purring was so loud that it drowned out the rain, nearly covered the sound of the saw through the wood. 

Geralt dried the saw on the inside of his cloak and put it away before he crawled under the tree and braced his feet in the shifting rocks. The tree was huge, so thick around that there was no hope of Geralt wrapping his arms around it. Axel had clearly been hitting it with Aard as often as he could manage, and near every branch other than the ones directly above him was snapped off.

The purring cut out as Axel stopped breathing, his lower lip bit tightly between his teeth, then slowly, shudderingly, resumed. He stared at Geralt, eyes so wide that Geralt wondered if Axel could even see him.

The bark dug into his spine, the scent of sap so strong he sneezed. Geralt breathed in, gathering his strength, then rose, lifting the tree on the flat of his back. The tree groaned and snapped where Axel had weakened it, bouncing on its remaining branches and thankfully not rolling toward Axel. Geralt shrugged the half he was left with away from the slab of rock pinning Axel's right side, the root ball groaning as he shifted it.

"Just got to get the rock off, then you'll be free," Geralt said quietly, into the sound of purring and rain. "Not much longer."

"My legs--" Axel asked, uncertainly. "They still there?"

So first Geralt knelt in the water again, carefully patting down the sides of Axel's legs from hip to foot. "There might be something wrong with your left ankle. And the branch in the right, course. You feel them okay?"

"I can kind of feel your hands," Axel said, and he sounded hopeful. "Numb from cold?"

"Likely as not," Geralt agreed. "Surprising you're awake." The cold worked differently on Witchers than it did on humans. It slowed them down, then made them sluggishly sleepy and numb to most everything. It was most likely possibly for them to freeze to death, but Geralt had never heard of a Witcher who had He'd heard of plenty--including himself--who'd accidentally napped their way through the worst of a winter storm and woken up a week or two later when the sun had come out, hungry as a spring bear. There was more than one reason Witchers tended to return home for winters.

Axel grimaced as Geralt hauled the slab off his shoulder and tossed it aside. Without the tree on top, it wasn't very heavy--the other Witcher would have been able to move it on his own. "I slept some, I think, but--I heard you?"

Geralt nodded, running his hands down the sides of Axel's neck, then shoulders, tracing down both arms. "Makes sense. Explains how you survived the last two weeks. Broken arm on that side?"

"Fuck, that long?" Axel groaned as he tried to push himself upright with his good hand, shaking so bad that Geralt nudging him back down was a kindness. "I--let me up?" He was starting to shiver, his body slowly waking up. "Want up."

"In a second," Geralt replied. "I've got a Swallow on me--any reason not to use it?"

"The stick in my leg," Axel answered with a huff of amusement, his teeth chattering blending in with the purring. "Prefer it--didn't stay."

"Nothing wrong with your spine?" Geralt had made the mistake of taking Swallow with a broken back once and only once. "I'll pull the branch out once you've taken it. Save as much of your blood as possible."

Axel shook his head, trying again to push himself upright. "I can--"

Geralt slid his arm under the Cat's shoulders, absently noting the odd vibration from the purring passing through Axel's soaked leathers. "Thought cats purred when they're happy," he said, vaguely curious. He'd never actually had a cat purr around him, only read about it in books, but the books were pretty consistent about that. And Lambert had insisted cat Witchers purred like kittens when they drunk. He'd walked it back when they'd asked him how he knew, but Lambert's Cat Witcher was the worst kept secret at Kaer Morhen.

Axel slid back toward being horizontal as soon as Geralt stopped helping, spurring curses from both of them. Geralt caught Axel around his waist and slid in behind him, sitting in the hip-deep mud as the cat Witcher's back collided with Geralt's chest. "Fuck, you okay?"

A wheeze, Axel's good hand patting lightly at Geralt's arm across his chest. Geralt flipped open his pack, grabbing the Swallow and popping the cork out with his thumb. "A second--" Axel gasped, shivering and purring so hard he vibrated against Geralt. 

Geralt hummed acknowledgment and covered the mouth of the vial to keep the rain out and the potion in. "When you're ready."

The other Witcher was cold against him, both of them soaked down to the skin and coated in mud. Geralt nudged him more upright, shifting both of them around until Axel's head was pillowed on Geralt's shoulder, leaving a smear of mud on Geralt's soaked wool cloak. Axel really was cold as a corpse and Geralt tugged him closer in awkward sympathy, trying to transfer the heat of his own body through their layers of armour and wool. Waking after having gone so cold was a miserable experience.

"Potion." Axel reached down to his thigh, batting aside Geralt's hand when he tried to to help, and jerked the branch upwards. He didn't make a sound as it ripped upward, the pine branch's pale bark coming out black with blood and mud.

Axel reached the limit of his range of movement before the branch ran out of length, and Geralt was impressed, suddenly, at how perfectly lucky and unlucky Axel had gotten. A solid double-hand width of thick branch had come up black and bloody from the other witcher's thigh, but the branch was still planted firmly in flesh that looked like it'd started healing around it. "I'll get the rest," he offered, lifting the small vial of Swallow to Axel's mouth. "Drink, I'll make it fast."

A tired, discontent sound came from deep inside Axel's chest, and Geralt didn't begrudge it to him. He would not like this either. But Axel's good hand released the branch, and moved Geralt's hand, shaking as he nudged it forward so he could fit his mouth around the rim. Geralt tilted the vial, holding it steady as Axel's throat worked.

Axel tapped the back of Geralt's hand to tell him to pull the vial away, and he breathed in, a fresh purr rattling both their ribs. "Tastes like shit. Did you double the brains or something?"

"One and a half times. Makes it hit a little faster," Geralt confirmed, reaching down to the branch and gripping it firmly. It trembled in his hand, shifting in time with Axel's too-fast heartbeat, and Geralt leaned them both forward to get better leverage before he pulled. It took two tries to pull the entire thing free. The branch wound up being the length of his arm when Geralt held it up in front of them, the tip snapped off into a ragged speartip. "Fuck. I should have tried to saw it off from below, too."

"Hindsight," Axel gasped after a few minutes, still shaking apart against Geralt's chest, every interval when he'd held his breath to keep silent marked by the cessation of the purring. It made a stuttering, pulsing rhythm or pain that Geralt couldn't ignore and equally couldn't do anything about. "Think--a hollow under my leg. It--"

"Yeah," Geralt said when Axel stopped. Cautiously, ready to pull away if the other Witcher made any indication it was unwelcome, Geralt pulled the edges of his cloak around Axel, wrapping his arms around Axel's waist to keep it in place. It was wet, but the wool was still warmer than nothing. "Can you meditate like this? Guide the healing?"

Axel shook his head mutely. Swallow hurt worse and worked slower when the injuries were old, and it'd heal around whatever debris was caught in the wound, but it was better than bleeding to death. Tomorrow Geralt could brew Dead Man's Tonic to put Axel under and re-open the wound to clean it, let him sleep through the pain. He could straighten out the break in Axel's shoulder and arm at the same time. No need to push him through it tonight.

A stray memory from the past made Geralt hum, the sound coming low in his chest and melding into the slowly fading purring. It was tuneless, rising and falling with their breathing more than anything. The older wolves had--it'd been a long time ago. Geralt had almost forgotten.

Maybe it helped, maybe it didn't, but Geralt kept it up until Axel started shifting against him, trying to pull his legs free of the mud, purring died down to nothing. "You ready?" Geralt asked.

"I might need some help," Axel said, his scent faintly anxious though his voice stayed firm and even. "I have no idea where my pack went. Or my horse. Or that fucking dog. I should have fifty crowns and a decent rune of fire I've been saving, though."

Geralt hummed, unsure why Axel was mentioning it. "I haven't seen your pack or horse, but I can look for them tomorrow, if you'd like. Did you end up finding the dog?"

"Help me out of this hole and I'll tell you what I know," Axel said, clearly impatient to get back to the inn and warmed up.

"Fair point," Geralt acknowledged, reaching back to his pack, set down what had felt like hours ago, but had been less than an hour by the unmoved smudge of brightness from the moon in the clouds overhead. He snuffed the camp lantern and put it away, then slid out from behind Axel and shrugged into the straps of his pack. He kept an arm around Axel's shoulders to keep him upright--probably unnecessary, but unlikely to hurt. "Can you get your arm around my neck?"

Axel stared at him, green eyes gleaming in the pale moonlight, the Cat potion long since worn off. Just when Geralt thought he might have to check for a head injury, Axel swallowed hard and placed his arm around Geralt's neck. "Like that?"

"Yeah." Geralt got his feet under him and braced on rocks that felt reasonably stable, then wormed his hand through the sucking mud under Axel's knees. "Going to try to keep you upright, but it's not going to be comfortable," Geralt warned him, then hauled them both up in one swift move. The mud made an incredibly loud sucking sound as he pulled Axel out of it, accompanied by a squeak from Axel that Geralt politely ignored. Changing positions after so long was inevitably painful, but there was nothing for it but to do it. "You good?"

Axel nodded, his arm much tighter around the back of Geralt's neck now, and his eyes extremely wide. 

Holding him like a Redanian bride, it immediately obvious that Axel was considerably slimmer and shorter than Geralt. Bit unusual for a Witcher, but it did make it easier to balance him. Also-- "You lost your boots," Geralt said. He moved over a step and crouched, balancing Axel's knees over the top of his thigh as he fished through the muck for them. "Hang on a bit tighter if you can. Feels like you're slipping."

The boots were about where he'd expected them, and Geralt pulled them free, tipped the water out, and dropped them into Axel's lap. "Hang onto those for now. I'll get them back on you when we're out of here," Geralt said, well aware that he was babbling uselessly at the other Witcher and mildly embarrassed about it. Jaskier had been a bad influence on him. Axel must think he was--

Geralt made it to the fresh cliff wall where he'd jumped down before he figured out what he was worrying Axel would think about him. "If I get you most of the way there, can you pull yourself up one-armed?"

"Ah," Axel agreed, his pupils huge and human-round as he stared at Geralt in the dim light. "I think?"

"Good." Geralt leaned them into the rockface, shifting his grip to wrap his hands around Axel's hips. "Lean up against the rock, it'll keep you steady while I lift."

Axel released his death grip on Geralt's collar and twisted around until he faced the rock.

"Good," Geralt said again, and lifted Axel straight up, grateful that he'd found the Cat Witcher and not, say, a Bear down here. Geralt could and had lifted Eskel in the same way, but it was far more awkward and involved a lot more of both of them fumbling for balance. Though possibly because they'd only even done this when both of them were drunk as squirrels in an autumn orchard. Axel's weight lightened abruptly as the other Witcher did something Geralt couldn't see from this angle. "You good?"

Axel hauled himself up, crawling onto the ledge above a little clumsily, but he got himself onto the second ledge above it without Geralt's help. "I'm good!" he called back. Axel tested the edge of the cliff for stability a few times, then sat on the edge. He blended into the dark, barely visible against the overhanging trees, only his mud-coated legs and bare feet visible against the pale cliffs.

Geralt jumped, catching the ledge with the hand that wasn't holding Axel's boots and hauled himself up one-handed. "You okay?" he asked, setting the boots by Axel's side. With Axel sitting like this, they were eye-to-eye. "You're breathing hard."

A breeze threaded through the trees, chilling them both. Geralt dropped his pack by the boot when he saw Axel shiver, pulling off his cloak and wrapping it around Axel's shoulders. It was going to need to be scrubbed within an inch of its life anyway, a little more mud wouldn't hurt it. "It's wet," he apologized, frowning at how inadequate it was. "You want your boots on?"

"Need them to walk, don't I?" Axel asked, and Geralt caught himself smiling in reply to the faint grin the cat Witcher gave him.

"Didn't think you were going to be able to," Geralt said, picking up the right boot and shaking it out again before loosening the lacings and handing it to Axel, and moving on to repeat the process with the left. "Easier that way, I guess."

Axel set the boot down and grabbed the edge of the leather armour on his calf, using it to haul his foot to rest on his knee, and then shoved the boot over his foot. He pulled at the laces and Geralt heard his heel squelch into place. Axel shoved his foot off his knee, only his speeding up heartbeat revealing pain. He stared at his other leg for a breath, then reached for it with a muttered curse.

It was probably rude. Geralt didn't necessarily like people helping him, particularly not strangers, but he also didn't like watching this. "Let me?"

The other boot was shoved at him almost before he finished speaking. "Okay." Axel wrapped himself in Geralt's cloak as soon as he'd taken the boot. It could nearly wrap around him twice over, Geralt noticed, mildly startled again by how small the other Witcher was.

"Fuck, is your sock still down there?" Geralt asked, trying to mop off some of the sand-laced mud with the cloak's edge. Axel's ankle seemed slightly off--the angle odd, maybe--but his foot looked fine otherwise. "I--yeah, I'm not going after it, sorry. Tomorrow I'll come back, see if I can find your pack, but--"

"It's a sock in a sinkhole," Axel said, amusement lacing his words. "Don't strain yourself on my account. I have another pair in my pack, and yarn enough to make a replacement."

Geralt nodded and eased Axel's foot into the boot. He'd used to do this for the youngest trainees, though it'd was a lot easier when both the foot and the boot were dry. Axel's heel slipped into place with a distinctly wet sound, and Geralt went to work on the laces. "You ready?" he asked, picking his pack up, and pulling himself up the second ledge.

Axel visibly gathered himself, then nodded. He stood slowly, wobbling as he found his feet, and taking a few limping steps.

It'd be faster if he'd let Geralt carry him, but Geralt could understand that Axel didn't want to risk them being attacked. He opened his mouth to offer again, then sighed instead. Axel was making the right choice, much as Geralt didn't like watching. "Then let's go."

The cloak make Axel look like a particularly gloomy wraith, completely enveloped in fabric that was nearly trailing on the ground. "Go where?"

"Back to the village," Geralt said. "Unless you set up camp somewhere? The inn's probably still going to be the easiest place for you to recover. Warm, dry, and there'll be food." It occurred to him that he had not yet consulted Axel on the plan he'd come up with, so Geralt continued, "I've got everything I need for Dead Man. I figured I'd drop you off tonight and go back to searching for whatever the fuck this thing is. Let you eat, warm up, and sleep. Then tomorrow dose you up and clean out your leg and reset your arm. Bone should still be soft enough to make it easy. Can call in a healer if it ends up complicated, though." Mobility was important enough to spend the coin on it.

The silence stretched long between them, rain a soft patter on the water in the sink hole and the trees above. Eventually Axel shook his head. "All I've got is the pre-payment for the contract, and that's yours by rights," he said. "I can't pay for any of that. There's a cave to the east of here, I was planning on staying there."

"They're giving me the room for free, and the food shouldn't be more than a couple crowns. Jaskier might even get it for us for free, he's good at that. As for the rest..." Axel seemed downright tiny next to Geralt, his eyes on level with Geralt's chest. Cat mutagens must be very different. Geralt was of average height among wolves, and none of his brothers were more than a hand shorter than him. He had no idea how old Axel was, but he _felt_ like a half-grown wolf, and Geralt didn't think himself strong enough to overcome that particular set of protective instincts. "Tell me what you uncovered and we'll be even."

"Lot of charity for a Cat."

"Not much for another Witcher," Geralt answered. "One of yours runs with my youngest brother, Lambert--"

"I know him," Axel said, "Him and Aiden. They're--Lambert told you about them? Aiden's been bitching for years that Lambert won't tell his family."

Geralt opened his mouth, and something about the way Axel said it struck him. "He didn't. Doesn't mean we don't know." Though certainly Geralt had thought they were friends and not--well he didn't know that they were anything else now, either, regardless of how Axel had said that. Wouldn't surprise him, though Lambert really _should_ bring the other Witcher home some winter if that was true. "You're still a fellow Witcher."

Axel laughed, low and disbelieving, then said, "Okay. Okay, I give. But you know what they say about feeding a cat."

Geralt didn't know what they said, but he nodded anyway. "It'll probably work out." Axel took an unsteady step in entirely the wrong direction. "Town is that way," Geralt said, pointing to his right.

"Auberon's Rest?" Axel asked, a faint line appearing between his eyebrows. "You're sure?"

"Just came from there," Geralt said, falling in step beside Axel, slowing his pace dramatically to accommodate Axel's. "Headman's Devon. His brother died the night after you disappeared--it stopped attacking on the full moons and started striking during the new moon and day."

"Fuck. The dog lead me to here. Werewolf was lairing in the well--" Axel broke mid-sentence, trying to catch his breath. Geralt did not reach out to support him, though he did think about it. "Tossed a bomb down the well to drive it out."

"Ground collapsed?"

Axel nodded, pausing under a tree, bracing himself on the trunk as he caught his breath. He was shaking again, a very faint purr chasing his breath. "Spent a week trying to get free, then lost track."

"Only a week sleeping, then," Geralt said, handing Axel a waterskin. "Not great, but not terrible."

Axel drank, then spat, then drank again. "Thanks, Wolf." He sagged against the tree, looking absolutely exhausted. "Give me a moment?"

"Though I respect your commitment to both of us staying battle-ready--"

"My what?" Axel joked when Geralt hesitated. "Don't think I could lift a penknife right now."

"--Let me carry you back?"

Axel laughed breathlessly, his pupils going wide as he looked up at Geralt. "Okay, sure. You can probably still kill it even with me weighing you down, can't you?"

Geralt shook his head in denial, his face hot. "Don't listen to Jaskier's songs. He exaggerates." He pulled off his pack and transferred it to his chest, then moved his scabbard down to his hip. His swords were too long to make carrying them there convenient or practical, but it'd do in a pinch. Geralt turned and knelt on the forest floor. "When you're ready."

"Not going to carry me like a blushing bride again?" Axel asked, taking a step and then nearly falling into Geralt's back with a startled curse. "Sorry--lost my balance--" he coughed, and it came out wet and ragged. " _Fuck_."

"Lean into me," Geralt said when Axel stayed still and shivering at his back. "Arms around my neck, legs to either side of me." Jaskier had taught Geralt this. telling him that if Geralt carried him over his shoulder like a sack of flour _one more time,_ Jaskier scream that Geralt was abducting him and leave Geralt to try to explain.

"...really?" Axel asked, his voice lilting uncertainly.

"It's called a piggyback ride," Geralt replied solemnly, because he found the name hilarious everytime.

It made Axel snort and then wrapped himself around Geralt's back.

"Sleep, Cat. There's a long walk back still." Geralt rose, shifting Axel a bit higher on his back and headed toward town.

Axel was tense and still on his back for a few steps, then melted into him like he'd abruptly turned liquid. "You're going to spoil me, Wolf." He set his chin on Geralt's shoulder, and, to every appearance, fell asleep.

***

Geralt shouldered into the quiet inn, Axel limp on his back, and basked in the warmth of the room for a breath. Fuck that was nice.

The aimless plucking of lute strings stopped, and a low bark rolled through the room. 

"Geralt! You brought...company?" Jaskier asked, bouncing to his feet and coming closer. "Who is this?"

"Axel, a Cat Witcher," Geralt said, his eyes on the uncommonly large dog following in Jaskier's footsteps. "Is that..."

The dog sat, its head on level with Jaskier's elbow and its yellow eyes staring at Geralt. A grey cat with an incredibly fluffy coat and leaf-green eyes leapt onto the table beside it, meowing demandingly at Geralt and noticeably not fleeing his presence. "That's the dog, isn't it."

"Interesting story," Jaskier said. "Really. These two appeared right after you left, and wouldn't leave for brooms or stew. And yes, this is the dog, and apparently, this is also the cat."

"The third and fourth family had cats," Geralt said, feeling Axel shifting on his back.

"The dog's a Witcher," Axel said, which would be a startling revelation if Geralt couldn't feel his medallion vibrating on his chest and Axel's against his back. "Someone cursed him or something. Sorry, I was going to tell you, forgot."

The cat chittered at them, and Geralt sighed. "You as well, cat?"

It nodded, then leapt from the table to Geralt's shoulder, claws digging into his leathers as Geralt tried and failed to dodge, an incredibly soft tail rubbing against his chin as it crawled over his shoulder, batted the hood off Axel's head, and meowed demandingly at him before it bit Axel's ear. "What--"

"Apparently he knows me," Axel said, laughing. "Well met, brother. I am glad to see you, though uncertain who you might be."

Geralt stared at the dog. It stared back. 

It was genuinely huge. And he couldn't imagine a brother of his not trying to make him recognize them.

"You a Bear?" Geralt guessed.

It nodded.

"Well, that complicates things."


	2. The Dog in the Bar

"Are you serious?" Jaskier asked, his eyes lighting up like Geralt had told him the brothel had a two for one sale on. "They're Witchers?"

Geralt nodded, looking over to the bar and finding it empty. "Is anyone from the inn still awake?"

"It's damn late, Geralt," Jaskier answered, "The cook is in the middle of her baking, but the rest of the staff is fast asleep." He rose to his feet and paced around the massive brown dog sitting between the benches, then swayed round to stare at Axel. "Why isn't he a cat?"

"He is a cat," Geralt said, frowning. "How--?" He could still feel Axel's medallion thrumming against his spine, there was no way Jaskier could see it.

"No, the Witcher," Jaskier said, "He's still person-shaped, yes? But why?"

"I'm Axel."

"He's Axel," Geralt said right on Axel's heels, then blinked at Jaskier. "Can you find a laundry tub somewhere? They'll kick us out for sure if I put him down. We're both filthy."

"How long can you carry me, just out of curiosity?" Axel chimed in as the cat slid between Geralt's neck and Axel's cheek, soft as the finest fabric Geralt had ever touched and purring like rattling dice in a cup. "Brother--"

"Fuck, are all cats so soft?" Geralt asked, feeling a keen sense of having missed out for his entire life. "It's like--like a baby rabbit."

The cat hissed, nipping Geralt's ear before he returned to frantically rubbing his face against Axel's jaw and purring up a storm.

"It _is_ ," Axel agreed, and Geralt felt him rub his face against the cat in turn. "You're silky soft, Brother."

Jaskier dropped a tub in front of him and clapped his hands loud enough to jolt Geralt's attention back to him. "Please Geralt, details. I beg you."

Geralt stared at the tub, then at the polished, clean furniture surrounding them. "Fuck." He wanted the inn room, badly. Axel needed the rest, and he'd do that easier in a proper bed. Further, Geralt was clearly going to need a place to keep a dog and a cat. 

"Come on," Jaskier said, picking the tub back up with a frustrated sigh that Geralt didn't quite understand. "We'll wash the mud off you in the yard. I saw a rain barrel out there."

It seemed reasonable, so Geralt waited for Jaskier to retrieve his cloak, well-dried on the bench in front of the fire. and wrapped himself in it. "How is it, Geralt, that no matter how hard it's raining, you still manage to come back absolutely filthy?" he asked as he swept through the door and paused there, grinning over his shoulder. "You owe me the story for this one, and I will collect when you are a little less tired, my friend."

"I'm not tired," Geralt protested. "And it's not that interesting, Jaskier. I didn't find the monster. I'm still not sure what it is."

"Pretty sure it's a werewolf," Axel said, squirming a little closer to Geralt for warmth as the actually-a-cat Cat Witcher leapt from his shoulder with a meow as Geralt carried him back out into the rain. "Saw it before I bombed it, and it smelled like one."

"Can't be a werewolf, it attacked on the new moon," Geralt replied, following Jaskier to the rain barrel at the edge of the yard. "Going to put you down," he warned Axel, seeing a handy bench. "Could be a werewolf and something else, I guess."

Axel winced when Geralt set him down, though Geralt tried to be gentle. Geralt dropped his pack on the grass by the bench, then yelped as a deluge of cool water poured over him. "Jaskier!"

Jaskier held up the bucket he'd liberated from somewhere, his grin wide enough to be visible under his hood. "Found a bucket!" he said cheerfully as thunder rolled overhead, lightning flashing in the clouds. "What can I help with?"

Axel laughed, soft and quickly gone as he fumbled one-handed with the clasp on the cloak he'd borrowed from Geralt. "The great wet wolf?" he said, too quiet for Jaskier to hear, and Geralt's mouth twitched up at the corners.

Geralt looked at Axel, and thought ahead to the next steps. "Can you find food, Jaskier? Something easy to eat. And my saddlebags."

The bucket thumped into the grass by Axel's feet. "Go back inside? Don't have to tell me twice," Jaskier said with a laugh, trotting back towards the inn with a wave over his shoulder.

There was no way Jaskier wasn't curious, and Geralt was deeply grateful for Jaskier's keen ability to read Geralt's meaning in anything he said. 

"Wolf, I--" Axel blinked the rain out of his eyes. "I don't think I can manage the clasps on my armour."

Geralt flipped open the buckle on his own bracer, feeling every grain of the grit that had slid between the leather and his skin as he peeled it off. It landed in the tub Jaskier had set out for him with a dull thunk, mud splattering off it. He was going to have to scrub every inch of his gear tomorrow. "Do you want help?" He pried off his other bracer, then started on the buckles on his brigandine.

"If you--please, yes," Axel said, working his gloves off.

Geralt nodded, peeling his leather brigandine off. The leather sucked to his linen undershirt, dragging it off in the same moment, and it fell on Geralt's feet. Geralt swore, retrieving the shirt from the ground and tossing it in with the armour. Everything he owned needed to be washed, and every bit of leather was going to need to be oiled if he wanted it to be able to stop more than a pocket knife. 

Axel's eyes widened as he took in Geralt's scars, his gaze tracing the one where a bruxa had scored four perfect lines down his chest. He licked his lips.

Geralt frowned, crouching to grab the waterskin and handing it to Axel. "Thirsty?"

Another flash of distant lighting, and Axel's pupils flared as he shrugged out of Geralt's cloak and took the offered waterskin. He drank deep, sucking the mouth in long, slow pulls, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. "Wyvern?" he asked, nodding at the scars as he handed back the skin.

"Bruxa." It would take a bucket of White Gull to make Geralt admit they were his favourite scars. He'd seen them on his chest when he'd tried to wash them out, and he'd immediately put aside every potion he had that might minimize scarring. He hadn't even meditated. They were good scars. Fierce looking and healed in raised white lines that looked like he'd _tried_. Geralt was unaccountably pleased that Axel had commented on them.

He kicked off his boots, stripped off his leg guards and dropped everything in the tub, then sank to his knees on the grass in front of Axel. "Boots?"

"What?" Axel asked.

"Do you need help with your boots?" Geralt asked. "You asked?"

Axel lifted his hand, mouthing something Geralt didn't quite catch. He looked far more confused than he should. "Uh?"

"Did you hit your head?" Geralt asked, reaching for Axel's head before he caught himself. "May I?"

"Sure?" Axel nodded after, his head cocked to the side as he watched Geralt.

His hair was soft, Geralt determined immediately, though that had nothing to do with whether Axel had a concussion or not. The dog barked inside the inn and the cat hissed at it. Cloud lightning lit the sky and thunder rolled down the hills and through the valley. Axel's hair was soft, tight curls that wanted to wrap around Geralt's fingers and black as Geralt's hair was white. It definitely wasn't hiding any lumps or depressions in Axel's skull. "Feels fine. Maybe you're tired?"

"I'm pretty tired," Axel agreed, leaning into the heat of Geralt's hands. "Help me out of my armour?" 

_Poor Cat is probably freezing,_ Geralt thought. "I'll be quick about it," he said apologetically, loosening the laces on Axel's boots and tugging them off, peeling the single lonely sock off as he went. It'd need to be scrubbed before he could wear it again. Next, the buckles on Axel's leather greaves, a line of them from his knee to inner thigh, so well hidden in the muck that Axel had to guide his hand to them. "Sorry," Geralt apologized, heat rolling up his chest and face.

"You're forgiven," Axel said, laughing. He had a nice laugh. "You know you're pretty as a dream, Wolf."

Geralt froze, one hand curled around the back of Axel's slender thigh and the other working on the highest buckle. It was stuck and he rubbed a firm line over the leather, dislodging embedded sand and mud as he scrambled for something to say to that. "Thanks?"

"I'm exhausted, and I feel like shit," Axel added. "But tomorrow I might not be?"

"It tends to take a couple days to come out of a sleep like that and stop feeling like--like you're feeling," Geralt said. "Though you didn't actually freeze, so maybe not."

"I cannot tell if you are flirting with me or not, Wolf."

Geralt bit his lip as he finally freed the tongue of leather from the metal and slipped the length of it free. "I like your eyes," he offered, out of a dozen other possible responses. "But you ought to rest. Heal. You don't owe me anything." 

Axel laughed so hard he started coughing, nearly sliding off the bench before Geralt caught him. "You're as mad as they say cats are, Wolf. You're--you think I'm trying to _pay_ you?" He offered his hands to be stripped, his eyes bright in the summer lightning. "You're lovely and gentle and huge. I'm near dead and I want you back."

It'd be nice, Geralt thought, embarrassment coiled low in his stomach, to be able to disclaim the ' _back_ ' part of that. But any Witcher worth their medallion could smell lies. "You're pretty, Cat, but I was not trying to--seduce you."

"Fuck, what do you do when you're _trying_?" Axel asked, holding still as Geralt stripped the gloves and bracers from his arms, adding them to the towering pile of armour in the tub.

Geralt lifted himself up onto bench, swinging his leg over it as he leaned behind Axel and loosened the ties holding Axel's brigantine in place. "Lift your arms," he said, peeling the swollen leather over Axel's head as Axel lifted them as much as he could. "And--honestly?" In for silver, in for gold, after all. "Pay for it, generally." It set Axel to laughing again, and Geralt grinned along with him. "I don't tend to notice subtle, Cat." Jaskier had told him this many times, and Geralt was fairly sure it was true.

"Then I'll make sure I'm not."

The shirt under Axel's armour was layered with stains, and reeked of pain. Geralt pulled it off without asking, both of them holding their breath until he could toss it on top of the pile of armour in the tub. Axel was much too thin without the layers of leather and linen, muscle and bone rising under his skin like they were trying to break through. He had fewer scars than Geralt--Lambert had given him a drunken lecture once, told him that Cats were taught to dodge and Wolves were taught to take the hit and come back up swinging. Lambert's conclusion had been that Geralt's bombs were terrible, but that was always Lambert's conclusion.

The stable yard was starting to lighten with the pre-light of dawn, and Geralt shook himself from useless thoughts, filling the bucket and dropping it on the bench between them. He grabbed two wash rags from his pack and tossed one to Axel before setting to wiping the worst of the dirt off himself. "So the dog's a Witcher?" Geralt asked, dunking the rag in the water to shake the sand off. "And the cat."

"Found Witcher signs by the home that'd been attacked--the one with the pigs. Warning signs, but in sap instead of chalk or blood."

"That's what lead me to you. I thought--but you wouldn't have had time, would you. So it was the dog?"

Axel nodded, running the rag over his wrist. In the brightening light, the angle of Axel's forearm was unmistakably off, his hand curled into a loose fist and limp in his lap. Not unfixable, but slow to heal, particularly when as run down as Axel was. "I also had a long, extremely weird conversation with him when I was pinned by the tree. Half thought I'd hallucinated it. He made fresh signs to lead you to me?"

"Hmm," Geralt agreed. "Curse, do you think?"

"Have you seen many that turned people into animals and then just left them like that? It's weird. And they said the family had the dog for ages, and he's still got enough memory to leave signs and communicate." Axel stretched, slow and careful of his injuries. "Are you done?"

Geralt nodded, pouring out the bucket and standing with a groan. The rain was getting to him, making his joints click and his scars ache. He needed to sleep and meditate, but hell if he'd have time. Unless... "The dog knew where it was, right?"

"Led me straight to it," Axel confirmed. "Wasn't there when I wore up after--thought I might have blown him up, too."

"So he probably knows what it is," Geralt said thoughtfully. If he could be sure it wouldn't attack in the next day or two, it'd be safe to get some rest.

"Werewolf."

"People died on the new moon," Geralt countered. "There might be a werewolf, but there's got to be something hunting on new moon, too."

"Reverse Werewolf?" Axel said after a second. "Turns into human on full moon, freaky wolf all the rest of the time."

"Is that a thing?" Geralt asked, helping Axel to his feet before grabbing the laundry tub and heading toward the inn's doors. "That doesn't sound like a thing."

"Had a job where the village swore themselves blind that that was exactly what was happening. Turned out it was an escaped mage's experiment who'd forgotten how to talk," Axel answered. following slowly. "Left him at a temple. He's a blacksmith now. Pretty good at it."

"Nice," Geralt said approvingly, opening the door and heading through. The heat of the inn hit like a warm blanket, absolutely perfect. Sleep would be _fantastic,_ Geralt thought as he headed toward the table Jaskier had set up at the back. There were two large bowls of stew, a full loaf of bread, cold links of sausage, a wedge of cheese, an impressive array of pickled vegetables set on the table, and a heavy black pitcher of what smelled like mead in the centre. The dishes filled the small table, the pickled cabbage threatening to slide off the edge if someone carelessly jostled it.

The giant brown dog presided over the table, gold eyes intent on Geralt and Axel; Jaskier was sleepily slicing coins of sausage and eating them off the tip of the knife. He fed every other one to the cat, and seemed to be trying to interrogate both animals. "And how long have you been a cat, Sir Cat?"

The cat took the sausage delicately and ate it indelicately, ignoring Jaskier's questions.

"Geralt!" Jaskier said cheerfully when he caught sight of him, reeling to his feet and grabbing two large bundles of cloth from the bench beside him. "Dry yourself before Marta comes out and scolds me again, would you?" He held out the cloth and took the tub before Geralt managed to figure out what he was trying to do. "The mysterious Cat you brought with you, if you would," Jaskier added, disappearing down the corridor that lead to the inn's rented rooms with the tub. 

"My armour--" Axel protested a second too late as Geralt handed him one of the drying sheets, trying to peer around Geralt to see where Jaskier had gone. "What--who's that?"

"Jaskier." Geralt dried his hair, wringing it with the linen to try to get the water out. "Don't worry, he's not going to steal it."

Axel blinked up at him, holding the towel with his good hand like he didn't quite know what to do with that. " _The_ Jaskier?"

"Can't imagine the world surviving if there was another of him," Geralt said. "He wrote the songs." He stared ahead resolutely. Axel had heard the songs--must have. A _Manticore_ Witcher had heard the songs all the way down in Zerrikania and written a letter to Vesemir about them. Vesemir had very solemnly read the entire thing out to the entire great hall at the first dinner after the eleventh moon and Geralt had nearly died of embarrassment. "All of them."

"Wow," Axel said. "I love those songs."

Of course Jaskier came back out in time hear him. Geralt bent to dry his bare feet, and then straightened, wrapping his towel around his neck for lack of somewhere better to put it. Jaskier grinned at him, wiggled his eyebrows, then grinned harder. "They're. Pretty good songs." Was that vain? It might be vain. "He makes me out to be more..." Geralt gestured vaguely, and had no idea how to end the sentence. "He makes me sound taller."

Jaskier didn't laugh, but he wanted to, Geralt could see it on him. "Always lovely to meet a fan," Jaskier said brightly. "Do you have a favourite?"

Axel opted to dry his hair with a single-minded dedication that Geralt felt deep sympathy with. The songs were _all_ ridiculous. "The one with the White Wolf wrestling the wild wyvern," Axel said through the towel, and Geralt immediately lost all sympathy for him.

"It didn't happen like that," Geralt said. "It was a _forktail_ ," he added, frowning at Jaskier who looked inappropriately and inordinately delighted. Geralt headed to the table of food and sat down by the dog. It looked as though it was laughing at him, tongue lolling out between teeth that looked like they could have come from a bear's mouth. 

"Oh, try the sausage, Geralt. It's apple-pepper and pork, it's divine. And it's still _alliteration,_ Geralt."

Geralt tried the sausage. "It's good," he said, before Jaskier asked and made him. "Did you wake the cook?"

"Oh no, she's been up and making bread for the last two hours," Jaskier replied, dropping into the seat next to Geralt and stealing a piece of the sausage Geralt had been slicing up. "I just asked if she had anything for my _dear_ friend--"

Geralt sniffed the air, then leaned in and sniffed Jaskier. "We were outside for ten minutes, there's no way you had time to fuck her."

"Did it an hour ago when I got tired of the dog staring at me. Thanks for the faith in my stamina, though." Jaskier said brightly. "She's absolutely lovely, and a she-wolf in the sack--well, in the kitchen--"

Axel sat across from him, moving slow and clearly aching, and reached for the stew. He wrapped his hands around the bowl, sighing as tension fell out of his shoulders. "She must have liked you."

"Well enough to set this aside for when you got in. I did pay for it, though." Jaskier said. "With my body, at least. Though she has a favour to ask of--well, you, Geralt, though I suppose now you might have to compete with--Axel, was it? She's offering more food."

It was a _lot_ of food. Geralt took a bite of the stew and hummed happily, then ripped a piece of still warm bread to dip in it. "So the dog and cat found you?"

The dog barked once, very low and quiet. Geralt turned to look at him, just in time to see Jaskier toss a sausage into the dog's mouth. "Jaskier!"

"He likes it!" Jaskier said. "He's been making me give him food since--I don't know, just after midnight? He just tromped in here like a tiny bear and barked at me and I gave him a piece of sausage because dogs, you know I like dogs, and then he's been doing it ever since. Besides, don't you think he looks hungry?"

Geralt narrowed his eyes at the dog. He had no fingers, only claws--could he even manage Axii? "How is he making you?"

The dog barked again, and Jaskier tossed him a piece of meat from Geralt's bowl of stew. "He keeps barking at me!"

The dog snapped up the meat, licked his lips, then turned his gaze to Geralt. And barked.

"Do you want food?" Geralt asked.

The dog shook his head.

"Trying to communicate, then." Geralt ripped off a chunk of bread, grabbing a sausage from the quickly disappearing pile, and shredded beet pickles, and stuck them into the middle of the warm bread with a smear of butter. Delicious.

"Well he certainly didn't refuse the sausages. Neither did the cat."

Axel had eaten half the bowl of stew in the time it'd taken Geralt to eat a few spoonfuls, and devoured the assortment of dried fruits in the center. "We can start with the Cat. I should know him, I think," Axel said.

The cat leapt onto the table, stealing a piece of cured meat from Jaskier's fingers and then meowed at Axel.

"Fascinating," Jaskier said, stealing shreds of pickled beets from the bread in Geralt's hand. "All right then, cat--meow when something is true, and stay silent when it is false."

"You older than Axel?" Geralt asked, stealing the bread from Jaskier and taking another piece, dunking it in the rich brown broth of the stew.

The cat stayed silent.

"Younger then."

The cat still did not meow, and Geralt stared at it, then looked at Axel. "Yearmate?"

"All of mine are dead--"

And the cat meowed, of course. Jaskier gasped in delight before he clapped a hand to his mouth, dragging a notebook from somewhere and opening it to scribble in. His barely voiced, " _Fantastic_ ," was more than audible to a table of Witchers, but at least he tried to keep quiet.

Axel squinted at the cat, then rattled off a list of names in between spoonfuls of stew. 

A sharp meow in the middle, and Axel paused, then said again, "Cedric?"

The cat meowed, and delicately stole the meat from Axel's spoon, the tip of his tail flicking back and forth like a fancy clock. 

Axel said, looking skeptical, then thoughtful. "Cedric, huh? When we stole Master Guxart's White Gull, was it me who took the blame?"

The cat yawned at him, ears flicked back in what Geralt thought might be annoyance.

"Or was it you?" The cat hissed and bit Axel's hand, fast as a snake, and Axel grinned. "Or was it that we both tried to blame it on that little shit Jaxon, but we were caught anyway because Master Guraxt smelled the lies on us?"

The cat meowed emphatically, ears pricking up as he leaned into Axel's hand, rubbing his face against it.

"You disappeared twenty years ago, Cedric. We burned you fifteen ago." Axel's smile faded, but his hand was gentle as he stroked the top of the cat's head.

Geralt ate, pretending he couldn't tell how awkward the silence was, both Axel and Cedric purring at each other, food on that side of the table momentarily forgotten. The pickles were really good. Salt and pepper red onions, pickled fennel root with carrots, and Geralt's new favourite, mustard seed in with cabbage, which had the texture to keep the seeds and not lose them in the brine--they popped between his teeth as the cabbage crunched, and the brine was just about perfect.

"So...the dog's a Bear?" Jaskier whispered to Geralt, clearly trying to not interrupt the reunion. "Also, do you want a shirt? Are you cold?"

A low woof of confirmation.

"The pickles are really good," Geralt said, because the thought had lodged in his mind. "I only have the one spare shirt," he added, when he remembered that Jaskier had asked. "And it's still covered in blo--"

"Actually it's with a laundress of much skill at the moment. I sent our things to be washed and dried. You have your sweater, though. And the shirts I gave you."

"I'll just wreck them," Geralt said, frowning as he thought about it. "And it's my winter sweater. It's not winter." Geralt made it last winter, and he was loath to let it be damaged when it was still so new. He should have left it at Kaer Morhen, but he hadn't realized he was going to be so attached to it when he'd packed it.

"So I'll get the one of the ones I gave you, then," Jaskier said, his mouth twitching as he tried desperately not to smile. "The one with the embroidery?"

His sweater was a nice dark grey. Geralt had never actually worn it except to try it on, and neither had he ever worn the ones Jaskier had given him. He chewed more slowly as he thought it through. "What about my grey one?" he asked hopefully, though it was perilously close to being good for nothing but rags.

"In the wash! You're welcome. Do you want the blue or yellow?"

Geralt sighed. "Axel, want to borrow a shirt?"

Axel startled like he was coming out of meditation. "I--sure."

"I'll go get them," Jaskier said cheerfully, having gotten his way. "If anyone comes in while I'm gone, just stall until I get back, Geralt."

"Sure," Geralt said, the sound of birdsong starting to rise outside, undeterred by the miserable rain. "Blue or yellow, Axel?"

"Yellow, I guess." Axel tossed a sausage to the dog, then ate one himself, a drop of water dripped from behind his ear to curve down his neck and then down his chest. "So. Uthered?"

The dog ate the sausage and stayed silent, his tail wagging.

"I only know of three Bears," Axel said. "Morwen? Jav...on? Javellion? Fuck."

"Isn't Javellion a Viper?"

Axel shrugged his good shoulder. "That's all of them I've ever known or heard about," Axel said. "They don't usually come this far east."

"Alfbern?" Geralt guessed when the dog didn't respond. "Berengard? Bruin?"

The dog didn't look impressed.

"Same." Geralt chewed on a slice of pickled fennel, pleased by how crisp it was. "Can we call you Bear?"

Bear barked once, in agreement.

"So Cedric has been here at least eighteen years. You've been around longer?" Axel asked. Bear barked, and Axel nodded. "Longer than forty years?" Another bark. "Longer than eighty?"

Bear hesitated, and growled.

"Around eighty?" Geralt asked, and Bear woofed confirmation. "Fuck, there had to be other Witchers in eighty years. Do we need to be on the lookout for more of you?"

Three things happened at once--Bear barked, the dull hum of someone at work in the kitchen became abruptly louder as the inn's cook opened the door into the common room, and Jaskier started humming to himself somewhere deeper in the inn. His new song, the one about the Wyvern.

Geralt froze, abruptly aware that he was half-naked and he'd dragged a second Witcher, a dog and a cat into the common room of an Inn. People had standards, and Geralt was only rarely up to them without Jaskier around to vouch for him.

"Is Brownie still giving you trouble?" she said when she saw them, drying her hands on her apron.

Bear's ears drooped and he dropped his head to gaze at her woefully. 

The cook came over to scratch Bear behind his ears. "He's a good boy," she reassured them. "Did he eat all the sausages? He loves my sausages. I can bring you some more."

Geralt shook his head, listening to Jaskier rummage through Geralt's saddlebags. "They're very good."

"Or do you want sausage buns? I just pulled them out of the oven, so they're a little too hot to feed sweet Brownie just yet, but you both look like you could use a little more food."

Bear licked his lips eagerly, his tail wagging, and Geralt retracted all feelings of pity he'd had toward the other Witcher. "Is Brownie your dog, ma'am?"

"Found him going through my neighbour's garbage near seven years ago, and he's been a blessing ever since." She smiled sleepily, smelling a little bit like Jaskier and a lot pleased with herself. "No wolves have dared go after our pigs--" her face clouded and she corrected herself, "at least until last month, but Brownie did his best, poor boy." She eyed both of them, then looked back at the kitchens. "Sausage buns, dear?" Bear barked hopefully, and the cook gently stroked his head, murmuring about what a good, loyal boy he was.

Even Cedric was staring at Bear, now. 

_That lucky bastard._ Geralt had never fantasized about being a spoiled pet dog before, but apparently that'd just been a lack of imagination on his part. "Sausage buns would be great," he said. "And--should you have time, ma'am--are you Marta?"

"That I am," she said. "I'll grab the buns for you, dear, just hold on a moment." Marta headed back toward the kitchen, humming softly to herself.

"Do you want us to try to change you back, Brownie?" Axel asked, amusement making his voice bright. "Seems like a pretty good thing you got here."

"Don't be like that, Axel, I'm sure Brownie is eager to get back on the Path and leave Marta's sausages behind."

Cedric's tail flicked judgmentally.

Jaskier came back out, holding two white linen shirts, both embroidered with dozens of flowers. "Okay, which of you wants which?"

"Axel asked for the buttercups," Geralt volunteered, reaching out for the shirt embroidered with wolfbane and forget-me-nots. He tugged it over his head, and felt his shoulders relax. Marta seemed not quite there, and she didn't seem to care about their state of undress, but should anyone else come in--he'd been thinking with his stomach. Stupid.

"Wow, those are really--buttercups," Axel said, holding the shirt out as he took in the floral riot.

"My name means buttercup, did you know?" Jaskier asked cheerfully, because given the opportunity, Jaskier would always choose to be a little shit. "I gave it to Geralt is hopes that he'd wear it, but alas--you'll do."

Axel leaned to the side so he could see around Jaskier and raise his eyebrows at Geralt.

"Wear it with honour," Geralt said, refusing to give into the urge to smile. "Marta's getting us sausage rolls, Jaskier. Did you get a chance to ask her about the attack on her farm?"

"Oh a bit," Jaskier said. "But she'd probably be fine to go through it again."

Marta came out with a bowl of at least twenty steaming rolls balanced on her hip. Geralt's nose twitched--they smelled delicious. "Brownie, Jaskier, did you tell the Witchers?"

Jaskier helped Axel get his arm through the sleeve, then stepped back and stole a roll from Marta's basket. "Not quite yet! They were so hungry when they got back, I thought it best to let them eat first. And you know what they say--it's best from the horse's mouth, after all!"

"Well that's all right then," Marta said, dropping the basket onto the table and sitting at the head of it. "White Wolf, I must ask a favour of you. I haven't the coin to pay you, but I can keep you well fed while you stay in the village."

Geralt nodded, because she seemed to be waiting for that. Also because she was being _generous_ with the food, and he was not actually opposed to working for more meals like this one.

"I believe Brownie is Auberon," she said. "Searching for his Axe."

Axel sat down, nearly swimming in Geralt's shirt. "You didn't mention that when we spoke...two weeks ago?"

"Three weeks, dear. Eat a roll, you look like a stiff breeze might knock you over. And Brownie only told me the other day. I realize I sound mad, Sir Wolf, but understand--"

"The dog is a Witcher," Geralt interrupted, trying to head off her theory. "He lead Axel to the werewolf, and then led me to the pit where Axel'd been trapped for the last few weeks."

Marta paused, then let out a sigh. "Well that makes this easier. Find Auberon's axe, fix his shrine, and I have no doubt he'll clear out whatever monster has found out village."

Axel opened his mouth, paused, stared at Geralt. "Actually, that's less clear."

"Oh, tell them the full story, Marta--it's wonderful, Geralt, I'm absolutely writing my next song about it." Jaskier took a careful bite of the hot pastry and hummed in pleasure.

"Did you see the shrine in the middle of town when you came in?" Marta asked, and continued without waiting for them to answer. "Something like a hundred years ago, a Witcher came through the village, and killed the infestation of giant spiders that had trapped the town inside their homes. There were thirty-four of the evil things, and though the Witcher triumphed, he was badly wounded. The town healer did his best, but Auberon died of his injuries after three days."

Geralt poured himself a cup of mead, and another for Axel when Axel pointed at his cup. "So--he's dead?"

Cedric hissed, and Bear--or Auberon, apparently--growled.

"Not exactly. He'd saved the village, you understand. He'd died so that we could live," Marta said with the sincerity and earnestness Geralt usually associated with religion. "So of course the village buried him where he'd fallen after the battle, and raised a shrine over his bones where people could give thanks." She stared at Auberon, worrying her lip between her teeth. "We were very rarely bothered by monsters in the years after--my grandparents called it Auberon's Protection. The stories--they say that if the town is ever attacked that Auberon will rise to protect us all again."

Geralt poured another cup of mead, because the first absolutely had not been enough. "You're Auberon?" he asked the dog, because he had to check.

Auberon barked.

Both cats were staring at him with a horrified kind of fascination, and Geralt couldn't deny that he was too. "Well, can't say I was expecting that. So your town worships a dead witcher who's come back from the dead as a dog?"

"Seven years ago, someone stole Auberon's Silver Axe from the shrine, and we feared his Blessing would disappear--but I suppose he simply took whatever form he was able to so he could continue protecting us," Marta confirmed.

Jaskier poked Geralt's ribs with his elbow, grinning madly at him. "Pretty awesome, right?"

"It's something." Geralt sighed. This was going to be the weirdest contract of Geralt's year, and he still didn't even know what he was going to be fighting. "Auberon, do you know what's killing people?" A low bark and a tail wag. "If I go and sleep, tend my armour, and pick up the hunt again tomorrow night, is there a chance of it attacking again?"

Auberon shook his head.

"All you have to do is find his Silver Axe," Marta said, nudging the bowl of rolls closer to Geralt. "Auberon can handle the rest, of course."

Geralt took five of the rolls. They were small, and he wasn't rude enough to refuse food. "I'll look for the axe tonight," Geralt lied, biting into a roll and finding it delicious. "These are great. You do amazing things with sausage."

Marta gave Jaskier a lingering look, and after a second's thought, Geralt did too.

Unfazed, Jaskier beamed at her and winked. "You really do. I've never had such a well-stuffed roll!"

"It's all in the mixing," she said, blushing.

Geralt decided that it was time for him to go to bed. "Jaskier, where's our room?"

"First door on the right. Your bags are on the shelf by the door, and a little bit on the bed." Jaskier pointed vaguely towards the hallway he'd gone down earlier, slithering over Geralt's lap to get closer to Marta--it was like he didn't even have bones, and not for the first time, Geralt questioned what manner of creature Jaskier's mother had fucked to make him. 

Auberon jumped off the bench, his claws tapping against the wooden floor as he made room for Jaskier, his ears pinned back against his head.

Axel rose to his feet, wobbled, and Geralt steadied him with a hand at his elbow. "Didn't he just--" Axel asked, his eyes flickering between Jaskier and Marta.

"He's going for seconds." Geralt leaned over and grabbed another three rolls and handed them to Axel. "You might as well, too. You'll be hungry later." Cedric leapt from the table onto Axel's shoulder and draped himself over it like--like a cat. 

"She's married," Axel said, as Geralt ushered all of them down the hall. "Three children, and--"

"It's best not to think about it," Geralt interrupted. "Jaskier is...people like him." 

"Are you sure he's human?"

The taste of pickles lingering in his mouth and the warmth of the air was sinking through the fine linen shirt he was wearing like an embrace. "I've never seen anything that suggests he's not human. He's never killed anyone, and I've never smelled anyone's fear on him," he said, the same defense he gave every winter. "And--free room. Food. I've only been stoned out of one village in the last five years. He's Jaskier." More than that, Geralt was fairly sure that Jaskier _was_ fully human--he was just one who'd been handed a very different set of rules at birth than Witchers were given.

Geralt slid open the door at the end of the hall, and paused, taking in the room beyond it and suddenly remembered the headman saying that the rooms were all Skellige sleepers. He'd assumed that meant plaid sheets, maybe a bear's head on the headboard, based on what he'd seen in Skellige. The floor was a narrow strip of stone the width of the door, bordered by a stone wall lined with shelves on the left, and on the right, a massive, waist-high bed that filled four-fifths of the room. Thick wool blankets covered the mattress, and a pile of carefully arranged feather pillows covered the head of the bed. It was large enough to sleep a dozen people, and Geralt hadn't seen a bed so luxurious since the last time he saw Yennefer. "You know, I was going to offer to take the floor."

"I think we'll both fit." Axel leaned against the hallway wall, sweat just visible on his forehead, breathing harder that he should be. Cedric jumped from Axel's shoulder to the middle of enormous bed. Axel swayed, thrown off-balance by the cat, and then started sliding down the wall like his knees had turned into jelly. "Fuck!" Axel yelped, the colour draining from his face.

It was both easy and helpful of him to pick Axel up, so Geralt did. _Could dogs laugh?_ Geralt wondered, staring firmly ahead as he carried Axel over the threshold and pushed the door shut with his foot. It sounded like Auberon was laughing at him.

"I'm fine," Axel protested, but he was limp as a fresh corpse in Geralt's arms. "I can walk--"

His trousers were still soaking wet, and it'd be a shame to soak the sheets--which actually _were_ Skellige wool in a black and red plaid. Geralt carefully set Axel on the ground, bracing him against his chest because he was fairly sure, that, in spite of his protests, Axel couldn't walk. "You going to get out of your wet clothes, or sleep like that?"

"Trying to get me naked, Wolf?" Axel asked, muffled against Geralt's chest. He was shaking, fine tremors that Geralt would only see if he was looking for them. Cedric hissed at them from the bed, then hissed at Auberon when Auberon licked his head. 

"The shirt's dry enough and you can borrow a pair of my pants to sleep in, if Jaskier left me any," Geralt answered, holding very still as Axel undid the ties on his trousers and they fell off his hips, hitting the ground wetly.

"Fuck, you really weren't kidding about that," Axel said. "I'm fine without. Couldn't leap out of bed if I wanted to." He sat on the edge of the bed, Geralt's shirt riding up on his thighs. The wound on his thigh looked bad, swollen and rough, and definitely needing to be cleaned out in the next day or two. It was extremely difficult for Witchers to get blood poisoning, not impossible.

"Kidding about what?" Geralt asked, his brow furrowing. He hadn't made a joke, had he? 

Axel shook his head, waving it off, so Geralt took his sword belt off and hung it on a hook within arm's reach of the bed before investigating the washbasin and pitcher set a hollow in the stone wall across from the bed. The wall radiated heat, and the enameled metal basin was hot to the touch, and the water inside the pitcher was warm. Geralt poked it, curious, but there wasn't any magic to it. The crackle of flames--and the sound of Jaskier on the other side--adjusted his mental map of the inn. The stone wall was the back of the fireplace, and the heat from the fire was radiating through it. Probably kept the room nicely warm in winter.

Geralt poured water into the basin, dipped one of the towels beside it and handed it to Axel. "Might want to wash the blood off your leg before you get between the sheets," he suggested before turning away to give Axel privacy.

Next Geralt righted his pack and set it by the door, and put his saddlebags back together. If they got thrown out of the room he'd be able to grab all the important things on one arm--except their armour. But if he put it in the stables it might get stolen. Geralt stared at the pile thoughtfully, but didn't come up with anything better than just grabbing it on the way out and hoping for the best. The trainers at the keep would have insisted that he clean his armour immediately and put it back on to make certain he didn't lose it, but it'd been eighty years since he'd been in their classes and Geralt was getting pretty good at ignoring the echo of their voices in his head.

"Is this what your life is like, Wolf? Axel asked as Geralt stripped out of his own wet trousers and draped them on another shelf carved into the stone wall with Axel's, next to his cloak and their shirts--Jaskier must have put them up earlier. "Nice rooms at inns, piles of food, people who--it was like she trusted you."

All three witchers in the room were staring at him, waiting on his answer, but there wasn't a good answer to that. "Auberon's is better," Geralt said, washing the last bits of mud off his legs before stepping into sleeping pants that were just on the edge of too large. "No one's called me a good boy in--" he blanked on a time when anyone would have called him that, coming up with nothing. "Maybe ever."

"She thinks he's a protective deity, not a Witcher, and before that she thought he was a dog." Axel looked thoughtful when Geralt dared to look up. "You--they know you're a Witcher."

He took Axel's towel, rinsed it clean in the basin with his own, and hung them both to dry, and then there was nothing left to do but go to bed. "You going to move over, Axel?"

Axel crawled under the sheets and blankets, clumsy and halting like every movement hurt. He collapsed near the middle of the bed, then melted into the mattress. "Fuck, this is nice."

"You sticking around?" Geralt asked Auberon as he leaned over the bed and cracked the tightly latched shutters open a hair, letting a breath of fresh air into the scent of damp wool and wet leather. "Or just until--" he tilted his head in the general direction of the common room, where he could still hear more than he wanted to. 

Auberon jumped onto the bed, circling before he found a spot near the foot of the bed that he deemed worth sleeping on, and lay down with a happy groan.

Geralt squinted in the sliver of light out the window, the sun nearly risen outside. He'd hear if anyone discussed anything outside the inn, and he'd wake up well before they could be attacked in bed, but just in case, Geralt reached for his sword belt and grabbed his trophy knife from its sheath. Then he jammed it between the shutter and the sill and tested it. The shutter didn't open further, or close. It'd have to be pried open from the outside, which Geralt would have to be dead to sleep through.

He glanced at the door thoughtfully, but eventually just left it. Jaskier would come back soon, and it'd be more trouble than it was worth to secure it. Geralt lifted the edge of the blankets and slipped in beside Axel, and made almost the same sound Auberon had. The mattress was wool-stuffed, just firm enough for comfort, and so warm. Geralt could feel the tension draining from his bones like water pouring from a glass. It was nicer than he'd ever been given before Jaskier, Geralt couldn't deny that. "You still awake, Axel?"

Axel squirmed closer, slotting himself between Geralt's arm and side with a shuddering sigh. Geralt didn't object when Axel shivered and molded himself to Geralt's body like a lenshen devouring its prey, wrapping his leg around Geralt's and resting his head on Geralt's chest. Axel was just being sensible. It made sense to share body heat; it took ages to warm up after sleeping so hard. Cautiously--thinking about the courtyard, and what Axel had said there--Geralt rested his hand on Axel's hip, rubbing his thumb over the buttercups embroidered into the linen.

A soft, pleased noise from Axel, and Geralt relaxed. "I don't think it'll last," he said quietly, trying to answer Axel's question from earlier. "Humans have short memories." He hadn't been spat on in over a year, but he'd had good years before Blaviken, too. Eventually Jaskier would get bored, or he'd get too old to think the Path was a grand adventure, and all of the fine things he'd brought Geralt would go with him.

"It's been better. They've been less angry at us," Axel said, his breathing deepening and his heartrate slowing toward sleep. "Could stay good."

"Could." _Wouldn't, though._ Geralt closed his eyes and let the exhaustion drag him down. Just a few hours and he'd get up to finish the hunt.

***

He woke up too hot, Jaskier curled up between him and the edge of the bed, Axel still using him as a pillow, and Cedric curled up in the narrow gap between Axel's leg and Geralt's. Auberon must have left at some point--Geralt vaguely remembered shoving Jaskier off the bed so he'd open the door for him. 

The sun drew a bright line on the floor, and Geralt judged it to be around mid-morning from the angle. Geralt rubbed the sleep from his eyes and yawned, his jaw cracking.

"This by far the most Witchers I've ever gone to bed with," Jaskier whispered, waking everyone else.

"Same," Geralt replied, amused in spite of himself. "You didn't get caught by her husband?"

"He's dead, very tragic." Jaskier yawned and stretched, rolling onto his back and almost onto the floor. "Nothing to worry about."

"The headman said he came home to find the pigs slaughtered last month."

"She said he died five years ago. Gout."

"Met him when I was talking to her," Axel said. "He looked pretty good for five years dead."

Jaskier yawned again. "You'd think they'd realize they don't have to lie to me," he mused, scratching at his stubble as he grabbed his socks from the floor. "Ah well. You off to hunt for that silver axe, Geralt?"

"No."

"Hmm, should I tell people you are?"

"Got to clean my armour, then I'm heading back to the sinkhole, see if I can find Axel's swords and pack." Geralt stretched, his back cracking pleasantly. "Unless Axel's ready to rebreak some bones--" He peered down his chest, saw the Axel's hair, chips of bark still buried in his curls. "How are you feeling?"

"Ugh, I'll make myself scarce if you're planning that." Jaskier grimaced, clearly remembering the last time Geralt had undone a badly-done potion heal. "Do you need buckets? Maybe a tarp. Please tell me you won't do it on this excellent bed."

Geralt rolled his eyes at Jaskier's dramatics. "We'll take it outside, but he wasn't gutted. It won't be that bad."

"That's what you say now, but you have a truly astonishing ability to get blood on absolutely everything around you, and this is an uncommonly nice bed." Jaskier dressed and shaved in five minutes, and then darted out the door with one last admonishment to not wreck the room.

"You can sleep, if you prefer," Geralt said. "You know the risks as well as I do."

Axel finally stirred, making a truly tragic sound. "Bed is so warm, though."

Cedric stretched and walked up Geralt's leg. He was surprisingly heavy for such a little thing. He settled on Geralt's chest, sitting like a hound, his tail wrapped perfectly around his tiny paws. In the light of day, Geralt could see that he had tiny tufts of hair on the tips of his ears, and subtle grey spots in his thick fur. Cedric looked at him disdainfully, as if he could sense the massive act of willpower that was keeping Geralt from petting him. Then he meowed like a banshee.

"What the--"

"Cedric, _no_ ," Axel protested.

The same baleful screech, and Geralt's skin tried to crawl off his bones. "What the hell."

"I want _sleep_ ," Axel said, pushing Cedric away as the cat wailed at him again. "No!"

"What is he doing?"

"Making me get up and deal with this," Axel growled, sitting up and dragging the blankets off of both of them. "A little more rest won't kill me, Cedric."

Cedric yowled like a bruxa and reached out to pat Axel's face with his paw.

"Fine!" Axel crawled free of the blankets and off the bed, only wobbling for a moment before he found his balance. "Geralt, if you have time this morning, can I ask that you break my arm?"

"Sure. Job will be easier with your help." Axel was really pretty when he was trying not to laugh, Geralt thought absently, working the pins and needles out of his arm. Not that it mattered. Geralt rolled out of bed reluctantly, the time for lazing in bed clearly over.

Jaskier had brought their laundry when he'd come in, the pile neatly folded by the launderer and slightly askew from Jaskier having touched it. Geralt found his spare shirt, admiring how well they'd gotten the stains out for a moment, then switched out the shirt he was wearing for it. "Do you want to borrow clothes?" Geralt asked over his shoulder, as he slung his sword belt across his shoulders and buckled it into place.

"Not sure I can roll up the hems enough to walk if I do." They both looked at the filthy and tattered remains of Axel's trousers that Geralt had set on the shelf earlier. "...might be a good idea to try, though."

"I can tack the hems up to keep you from tripping," Geralt offered. "Doesn't have to last long, just until we find your pack."

"I'm pretty sure everything in it's going to be soaked through. There's only so much oilcloth can do." Axel sighed. "You don't mind?"

"No, it's fine." Geralt handed his spare pair of trousers to Axel and then turned to his saddle bags, searching for his sewing kit. Axel started laughing, and Geralt looked up from threading his needle.

"They're a bit big." The legs went down past Axel's toes, and he had to hold them up to keep them from sliding down his hips. "Maybe I can soak the blood out of mine."

"Sit on the edge of the bed," Geralt said, slipping the thread through. "It's not that bad."

"You've already done a lot--this isn't--I can just wear mine. It's not the end of the world." Axel ran his hand through his hair, his smile suddenly looking forced. "You don't have to."

"I already threaded the needle." Geralt breathed in, trying to scent Axel's mood on the air, but scenting emotions less powerful than grief, lust, and pain was a difficult thing. He came away unsure. "It is not...I do not mind. I'm not going to properly hem them."

"I don't wish to be a burden, Wolf."

"It's not burdensome," Geralt said, but he tucked the needle back into his kit and fetched Axel's trousers from the shelf. They smelled like blood and rot, and he tried not to breathe in too deeply when he handed them to Axel. "You won't have to wear them for long."

"Planning to strip me, Wolf?" Axel asked, his good humour restored as he quickly dressed. "Be gentle, these clothes have taken a beating."

Geralt laughed, slinging his potions bag over his shoulder and grabbing the laundry tub filled with their armour. "Ready to sneak out? Saw a place down by the river where we can do it."

Axel stole a sausage roll from the shelf where Geralt had left them last night and followed him out, Cedric on his heels.

***

The village was well out of shouting distance and the water was clear and cool, shaded by overhanging willow trees. Geralt dropped the tub on the pebbled bank, closing his eyes and listening. A herd of deer was foraging on the other side of the river, and what he thought was a very distance pair of wolves, but nothing else was close enough to be worth worrying about. 

"Did you want the Dead Man's Tonic?" Geralt asked, putting his potions bag on a handy rock, and opening it. "You can make it yourself, if you'd like--"

"What is it?"

"Cats don't use it?" Geralt asked, startled into looking up from his ingredients.

"Never heard of it," Axel said. "Maybe we call it something else? What's it for?"

"Makes you numb and relaxed. Never much call for it on the Path, but we use it at Kaer Morhen when resetting bones."

"And here I thought Auberon was the spoiled dog. You get painkillers for that?" Axel laughed, but he cradled his arm against his chest, his heartrate increasing. "What are the ingredients?"

"Endrega embryo, wolfsbane, belladonna, and hemlock. It hits a lot like White Gull, but less euphoric and much deeper." Geralt pulled out a fresh Swallow, White Honey, and White Raffard's just in case, and closed his bag, deliberately stepping away from it. "If you don't want it, I won't make you." It felt a little barbaric to do it without it, but Geralt kept that to himself. Most things about being a Witcher were barbaric, and there was no prize for pointing it out. "It isn't necessary."

"I can't believe I have to turn that down," Axel said, "But I'd rather have my wits about me." He limped closer to the river and settled on a flat rock near the edge. "It is not--You have been very kind, it's not that I think you'd--" Axel shucked off his borrowed shirt, and folded it carefully before setting it on the bank beside him.

"I doubt I'd be able to take an unknown potion from you, either," Geralt said, placing the three potions on the shirt to keep them from rolling away. "Honey, Swallow, and Raffard. Last is just in case, but you're welcome to use it if you want."

Axel touched each vial in turn, then nodded. "You're letting me pick when to take them?"

"If you pass out I'll pour Swallow down your throat, but other than that, yes." Geralt stepped back, giving Axel space.

The river swept past them, the herd of deer left in search of greener leaves, and Axel's heartrate slowed to match Geralt's pace. "I'm ready."

Geralt knelt at Axel's side, taking the offered hand in his own. "Did this happen when you fell?" he asked, tracing the line Axel's bones through the paper-thin layer of his skin. The misalignment wasn't particularly severe, just enough to leave tendons on one side of Axel's hand pulled tight, and too lax on the other.

Axel nodded, and Geralt snapped the bone at the break and straightened it in one move, bracing it on his own forearm while he waited for Axel to breathe again. "Fuck, I forgot to grab something to split it with. Are you going to wait on taking the Swallow?"

He looked pale, but steady. "More important to have for my leg."

"Not wrong," Geralt detached the sheath of his favourite knife one-handed, fitting it to the underside of Axel's forearm and wrapping Axel's fingers around the handle. He'd brought bandages at least, and made quick work of binding Axel's arm to the splint. "Sorry, I usually stay as far away from them doing this as I can."

"Same," Axel said, his eyes fixed on the horizon and the colour slowly returning to his face. "It's painful to watch."

Geralt hummed in agreement. "Did you need me to take a look at your ankle? It looked misaligned as well."

"I was born with a club foot. It no longer troubles me, just looks a little odd." Axel brushed his fingers across his thigh, tugging the ragged edge of the hole in the fabric. "Here, now?"

"Yeah." Geralt took a moment, closing his eyes and clearing his mind. It was different to cause pain like this. Difficult to tolerate. Difficult to experience. The anticipation made it worse. "Do you want me to dig, or use Honey to force it out?"

"No use making these worse," Axel said, his tone dull, plucking at his pants. He stood, slow like the swaying branches above them, and peeled them down to his knees before collapsing on the rock, holding his freshly broken arm against his chest. "Fuck."

"Honey or the knife and tweezers," Geralt repeated, running his fingertips lightly over the fresh scar, his frown deepening. It was hot to the touch, swollen and soft like over-ripe fruit. "It might have to be both," he said, searching for the exit wound underneath, and finding it in similar condition. "It feels infected."

"Both is fine." Axel held out his hand for the Honey, still staring across the river and breathing like he was on the edge of sinking into meditation. He pulled out the cork with his teeth, covered the vial's mouth with his thumb. "You ready?"

Geralt took the long tweezers from his potions kit, and the slender and very sharp knife from his sewing kit. "Ready," he said, resting the blade against the swollen skin.

Axel drank, and Geralt sliced the skin open top and bottom, hopefully giving the Honey an easy path to forcing out the abscess and foreign material. "Last time I had to do this," Geralt said, trying to distract himself from the liquid starting to ooze free and drip down Axel's leg. "Last time I had to do this, I'd been gutted a week earlier. Closed it with Raffard, but infection spread, and only person around was Jaskier."

A low, breathy laugh. "That poor bastard."

"It was a fucking mess. Took three vials of honey and cutting a hole in my side to help it drain. I made him hold it open. Didn't realize--apparently humans would die from that. Went into a trance as soon as I could, and woke up to him composing my eulogy." Geralt pulled a splinter working its way free, then a curl of bark. "Not my best moment."

It drew another laugh from Axel.

Cleaning Axel's leg wound was faster than his gut wound had been, draining clear in under half an hour, but it left both of them shaking and the riverbank reeking of infection. Geralt handed Axel the vial of Swallow, finally breathing easy when Axel drained it. 

He cleaned the mess from Axel's leg while the potion did its work, wrapped it in clean bandages soaked in White Gull while Axel meditated through the last of the pain.

Cedric reappeared, settling on the rock beside Axel. His eyes were closed tight, whiskers and ears flat against his skin as he purred and pressed into the side of Axel's good leg. If they didn't use Dead Man's Tonic, Cat Witchers likely had more than their fair share of bad memories for healing.

Geralt went to the riverside with their armour while he waited for Axel to wake, cleaning it as he slowly settled back into his own skin.


End file.
